


The Transitive Property

by pinksnowboots



Series: Old Fanfics [2]
Category: Death Note
Genre: Drabble, I like to relate my drabbles to math and science because I'm a dork, Math, Old Fanfic, butchering of mathematical concepts, shitty highschool writing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-15
Updated: 2012-03-15
Packaged: 2018-01-05 06:29:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 568
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1090712
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pinksnowboots/pseuds/pinksnowboots
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everything Matt knows about the world seems to go through Mello. It makes sense, mathematically.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Transitive Property

All the children at Wammy's had learned about the transitive property. If A=B and B=C, then A=C. An easy concept.

Mello personally didn't give a damn about the transitive property. If Kira was a psychopath and a bastard, and Light Yagami was also a psychopath and a bastard, that wasn't enough to prove that Light Yagami=Kira. The transitive property only worked for a specific format, and almost nothing about his line of work fit into that format, rendering it useless. It was one of those things that he learned, used well enough to score one point below Near on every test, and promptly labeled as useless bullshit.

Matt personally liked the transitive property, although that wasn't something that he would share with Mello. It seemed that a lot of the things in his life fit. Video games, for instance. If Mario is the hero and the hero saves the princess, then Mario would save the princess. Not exactly what the geometry teachers intended, but it worked, and it was reassuring to have something be so simple when most everything was not.

Matt knew that the important things-the Kira case and such-could not be broken into strictly mathematical terms. If so, L would have done it long ago. But Matt was not invested in the Kira case except by the transitive property. Matt (A) cared about Mello (B), and Mello (B) cared about the Kira case (C). Therefore, Matt (A) cared about the case (C). But if there were no second link, no point B, then A and C would never have any connection. That was the thing. He was connected to so few things directly-really, his games and Mello were about the only thing-and so the only way he could interact with everything else was transitively. He experience adventure and imagination through his games, and everything else through Mello.

The word itself implied movement. Transitive, transit, transport, transition. And Mello was the thing that made that possible, the one who bridged the gap between Matt himself and whatever point C may be. Mello had introduced him to leather, to chocolate, to bars and dance clubs. And surprisingly enough, to religion.

Matt was not religious. He did not consider himself religious or identify with any sort of higher being. Except transitively. Mello was Catholic. He believed in his rosary beads and icons, and in a God who would somehow forgive two gay boys for every major sin in the book: pride (If Mello didn't have it, he wouldn't try so hard to be the best), greed (They were greedy about superficial things-video games, chocolate-and more serious ones like the other's time and attention), sloth (Really, if Mello let him, Matt would never leave his house), gluttony (As everyone knew, Mello was addicted to chocolate), wrath (As everyone also knew, Mello had a temper), envy (And everyone definitely knew that Mello was insanely jealous of Near), and lust (That one required no explanation to anyone at Wammy's with working eyes or ears). Though he was the embodiment of everything Catholics claimed to condemn, Mello deified their conventions and went right on believing amidst his cloud of sin.

Mello believed in all that, and Matt just believed in Mello. But Matt figured that if Mello believed all the preposterous, wonderful, ridiculous things, then by the loosest interpretation of the transitive property, he just might believe them too.

**Author's Note:**

> More old fanfic crossposted from ff.net. Full disclosure: I wrote this before I started watching Death Note. My only exposure was from reading extensive amounts of fanfic, so if my characterization is off, that's why.


End file.
